Managing Beyond the Project with The BEN

In conclusion

Business Engine Network is just one solution that is focusing on providing enterprise level solutions to address the complexities of projects within organizations today. By providing integration with existing technologies, plus by using a familiar interface such as Internet Explorer, the BEN has been positioned to be easy to adapt into an organization. While the price is a bit high for smaller companies, the level of functionality may be more than they need anyway. For larger companies the ability to integrate the project plans and the status of those projects into real-time systems is a critical necessity. The BEN is one solution that is trying to tie information together and to bring information to the decision makers, regardless of where they are in — or out of — an organization. Although development tools continue to get easier to use, the status of projects has become more critical within organizations. As such, the tools for managing the projects, and the organization, continue to rise to the challenge as well.

For more on The BEN, you can go to http://www.businessengine.com. For more on managing projects, you can check out Developer.com's project management section.

Screen Shots

The following are screen shots from the BEN. The screenshots and descriptions were provided from Business Engine Software Corporation.

My BEN - Executive dashboard or home page view customized for a CIO or other IT executive showing summary portfolio information. The colored symbols are triggered by pre-determined thresholds e.g. red 'stop' sign represents high risk requiring executive intervention; yellow warning signs for medium risk or that the project is temporarily off track; and a green 'go' symbol means the project is on track and on budget.

Portfolio Management - The following shows the portfolio management modeler designed to let executives or project managers do 'what if' scenario modeling and analysis. This view shows a portfolio of projects (top left) and the dates the projects are scheduled to start and end (top right). The bottom half of the screen shows the impact on resources (bottom left) and overall capacity of the firm to do them (bottom right). Users can adjust any portion to show the impact of delaying or canceling projects in the portfolio on capacity, dollars and value.